


A Way to Escape the Day

by waltzmatildah



Category: Rookie Blue
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 11:33:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternative ending to episode 4.04, 'The Kids Are Not Alright'.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>She pushes her door open and gets to her feet. Can’t quite decide if she’s pleased or pissed off that the champagne buzz has lifted, been replaced by a mostly clear head and a seething kind of fury.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Way to Escape the Day

She doesn’t punch Chloe in the face. 

That’s accomplishment number one.

She also makes short work of seven minutes. Polishes off an entire bottle of something bubbly save for the half glass she pours into a plastic tumbler for Tracy and doesn’t so much as shudder.

That’s accomplishment number two.

Number three, she hopes, will be clawing her way through the rest of the evening without bursting into irrational, alcohol-fuelled sobs and hating herself forever.

 

 

 

She uses the cover of an impromptu backyard soccer match to head to the bathroom unnoticed, one hand heavy against the wall. Sits down on the closed lid of the toilet and rests her head sideways against the cool tile. She hasn’t come here to pee.

Her phone’s in her back pocket, which means she’s sitting on it. Lifting her ass cheek high enough to drag it out is almost more movement than she can manage, and by the time she’s got the screen unlocked and is attempting to co-ordinate her index finger into controlled movements the whole thing has started to feel like a really bad idea.

_Good._

It’s really bad ideas that she’s looking for after all.

 

 

 

He’s in his own car this time, which makes for a change, and the remnants of the black eye he’d been wearing the last time she saw him have faded and disappeared now. It’s been weeks since they last spoke, and she wonders absently what exciting Friday night activity her to-the-point SMS request to come pick her up had interrupted.

Decides then, as he shakes his head at her pointedly and half rolls his eyes in the glow of the iridescent dash lights, that she doesn’t particularly care.

 

 

 

She fumbles with the electronic control and opens the window beside her head with a mechanical whir, rests her chin on the ledge and closes her eyes into the still-too-hot evening air that roars past as he accelerates away from a stop sign.

“Gail.”

It’s the third time he’s said her name since she snapped her seatbelt viciously into place and she’s yet to react to a single instance.

At least, not beyond poking at the volume of the radio and setting the somewhat incongruous sounds of Blink 182 to bone-rattling levels.

 

 

 

The car slows to a stop after a series of left hand turns and a stretch of straight road. She doesn’t have to open her eyes to know where they are.

The sudden silence as he cuts the engine is shocking and she sits with it for a beat. Lets the fading memory of distorted base roll around inside her chest as she breathes; _In_.

 _Out._

 

 

 

She pushes her door open and gets to her feet. Can’t quite decide if she’s pleased or pissed off that the champagne buzz has lifted, been replaced by a mostly clear head and a seething kind of fury.

“Gail, wait…”

But his concern is merely cursory at this stage, going through the motions of what’s expected, so she doesn’t wait for him. And he doesn’t follow her. 

At least, not yet.

It’s an arrangement they’ve come to trust and it works just fine both ways.

 

 

 

She toes her shoes off and leaves them discarded in the grass as she walks forward into the half-dark. The night sky above her head seems endless and empty, the residual light from the surrounding city cancelling out any chance of seeing the stars.

The rage that’s been building in her veins for months now has started a slow bubble and she’s caught between a scream and burst of giggling hysteria when he catches up to her, her shoes snagged on his loosely crooked fingers, his eyebrows raised into metaphorical question marks.

And it’s then that she breaks all of their rules.

 

 

 

He kisses her back at first, she notes, caught off guard and unprepared; a reflex motion maybe. And when he finally gets himself together and pulls back, breathless and open-mouthed, she’s already got her fingers working at the button of his jeans; grin wide, manic.

“Gail,” he says.

She listens this time, lets herself react.

“Yes, Luke?”

All feigned innocence, like maybe he doesn’t know her at all.

“What’s going on?”

She shrugs, follows the movement of the dappled shadows across his face as the tree branches overhead shift slowly in the breeze.

“I’m getting in first,” she says simply, matter of fact.

 

 

 

He closes his fingers around hers, his grip not too tight but solid enough to make his point loud and clear.

“You don’t wanna do this,” he says.

And she swears, if he were anyone else…

 

 

 

She rebuts his incorrect assumption with a quick flick of her wrists. Has him flat on his back in the dry grass before he can so much as exhale.

“You’re out of practice, Homicide,” she says. “That was embarrassingly easy. Seriously…”

She rests one knee on the centre of his chest as she reaches for the hip flask he’d fumbled in the fall. Twists the cap free and relishes the acid burn of liquor against throat and stomach and blood stream.

_Fuck._

_Yes._

_This._

This is _exactly_ what she wants to do.

 

 

 

“Gail,” he says; a warning of sorts, his voice low, a rumble, dangerous. “I’m not going to stop you. I’m not that guy. You need to know that before you do any-”

She cuts his ‘I’m Not The Good Guy You Seem To Think I Am’ speech short with her tongue between his teeth. 

A different version of the same fucked up story he always tells.

 

 

 

If she’d wanted a ‘Good Guy’ she’d have called someone else.

Simple as that.

 

 

 

She doesn’t bother using words to explain.

Thinks she makes her feelings on the matter pretty clear nonetheless.


End file.
